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Friday, December 23, 2016

Say “Nyet” to Trump

It is very likely
now that Donald Trump will be inaugurated as president of the United States on
Jan. 20, in no small part because of the direct intervention in and
manipulation of the American electoral process by Vladimir Putin, Russia’s
strongman who rose to power as a ruthless agent of the KGB, the former Soviet
Union’s secret police.

As we all know,The
Washington PostandThe
New York Timesrecently reported
just how deeply Russian hackers invaded the computers of the Democratic Party,
a move intended to confuse voters with leaked excerpts of emails and other
documents and thus throw a monkey wrench into the election.

Now ThePostreportsthat
the CIA believes the Russian meddling was deliberately intended to help sway
the vote in Trump’s favor.And NBC News saysit was Putin himself who “personally
directed” those leaks.

Why did he do
this? For one thing, according to Michael McFaul, the former American
ambassador to Russia, Putin has a thing about Hillary Clinton.

"He has had a vendetta against Hillary
Clinton that has been known for a long time because of what she said about his
elections back in the parliamentary elections of 2011,”McFaul told NBC News(Clinton had questioned the integrity
of the Russian elections).

But more important, McFaul continued, “He wants
to discredit American democracy and make us weaker in terms of leading the
liberal democratic order. And most certainly he likes President-elect Trump's
views on Russia.”

All of which,
apparently, now has helped land us in the worst political fix since the Civil
War, an electronic invasion thatformer Bush
speechwriter Michael Gersonsays
he believes could be “the largest intelligence coup since the cracking of the
Enigma code during World War II.”

Yes, we know some
of this remains speculation. Yes, we know Democrats would like to point
attention away from some bad, self-inflicted mistakes the Clinton campaign
made, mistakes that hurt it on Election Day. That they failed to realize the
depth of the anger in the American heartland didn’t help. And neither did the
FBI/James Comey intrusion.

Yes, we know the
documents handed to WikiLeaks from the Clinton campaign and the DNC were real
(although it’s worth noting thatasThe Timesreports,
some documents leaked from George Soros’ Open Society Foundation “turned out to
have been altered [apparently by the hackers] to make it appear as if the
foundation was financing Russian opposition members.”)

Yes, we know that
despite all the Russia news, Republican efforts to suppress the vote are
ongoing and a huge concern from which we cannot be distracted — and which must
be addressed as well.

And yes, we know the United States has
consistently intervened in and sabotaged elections in other countries, actively
working to install leaders who would kowtow to the interests of our government
and American corporate interests.

But none of this
negates the greatest implication of Putin’s ability to influence the election
of a fellow authoritarian and would-be strongman to the presidency of the
United States.

It is, inthe words of former
acting CIA Director Michael Morell, who briefed George W. Bush on
9/11 but supported Hillary Clinton this year, “an attack on our very democracy.
It’s an attack on who we are as a people. A foreign government messing around
in our elections is, I think, an existential threat to our way of life. To me,
and this is to me not an overstatement, this is the political equivalent of
9/11.”

Nancy LeTourneau
notesatWashington
Monthly’s Political Animal blog, “To understand what is happening here, it
is important to reject the old Cold War frame about a contest between
capitalism and communism. Russia has long since ceased to be a country built on
the teachings of Karl Marx and has evolved into a right-wing ethno-nationalist
plutocracy.”

As circumstantial
as some of the evidence may seem, we must not forget that these anti-democratic
tactics are something that Vladimir Putin has attempted not only in the United
States but also in a lot of other places.

He is the “standard-bearer and patron” of
extremist politics,Daniel Benaim and
Perry Camack wrote inThe New Republicthis past March, and “has paired his
brand of hyper-macho contempt for liberalism with active support for radical
parties in Europe.” Now he has brought his brand to America and found a kindred
salesman in Donald Trump.

Did Trump or
members of his staff know what was going on?

Probably.

Remember that
Trump’s first campaign manager Paul Manafort — the “King of K Street” lobbyists
— had pro-Russian factions as clients; his name with multimillion amounts
beside it wasfound in a log of
financial transactionsafter
he had helped Putin’s friends in the Ukraine.

When word began to spread of these ties,
Manafort left the campaign. He is now back in Trump’s graces and, according toBloomberg
Businessweek, positioned to reap the harvest of his relationship with
Trump and his merry band of crony capitalists.

It could be most revealing to hear what Manafort
would say, under oath, about his intercession between Trump and Putin.

And just how
extensive are our president-elect’s ties to Russian oligarchs? How much does he
owe Russian banks?

Now we may know more exactly why Trump has
refused to release his tax returns; they could be full of clues about his
foreign creditors.

We’d learn more if he’d divest his business interests,
too, but he won’t.

We do know that Trump’s son, Donald Jr.,told a real estate
conferencein 2008:
“Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our
assets... We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.” And there’s more to
come as Putin and Trump mix and mingle Russian oligarchs with American
plutocrats.

What happens now?
How do we confront this crisis of a president-elect who may owe his victory
partly to the stealth of his Russian doppelganger?

How do we get to the bottom of this before it is
too late and a very unstable, egomaniacal and vindictive Donald Trump is handed
control of the CIA, the NSA, the FBI, the US Army and Navy and Air Force, the
Departments of State and Homeland Security, the IRS and every regulatory agency
of the US government?

Who from within will challenge him then?

President Obama
has ordered a full report from the intelligence community before he leaves
office.

A bipartisan commission like the 9/11
investigation could become the public watchdog, certainly more so than proposed
House and Senate committee investigations which Trump loyalists in the GOP
might publicly support but certainly attempt to stymie.

Not only does
this increasingly seem like yet another step in Putin’s worldwide subversion of
liberal democratic beliefs and Trump’s desire to enrich his family and cronies
by surrounding himself with multimillionaires and billionaires known for their
predatory appetites; it is one more step to a planet dominated by international
oligarchs and kleptocrats, part and parcel of a “huge con job,” as Nancy
LeTourneau writes.

The Trump campaign “convinced a lot of Americans
that they are a populist movement on behalf of the American worker when in
reality it is all about an attempt to improve the fortunes on the very global
elite they rail against.” If that means hooking up with Putin and
authoritarianism, she concludes, Trump’s people believe that’s not a problem.

Just look at the
appointment of ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson as secretary of state, a man who’s
been a happy business partner of Putin’s Russia — and other totalitarian
regimes — for years.

He has shaken the bloody hand of just about
every despot whose power rests on the black gold beneath their subjects’ feet,
and it doesn’t seem to keep him awake at night.

He’s made it clear: His only interest is making
money.

So don’t be surprised if one day soon you hear
talk from the White House of something very like that golden oldie of World War
II, a non-aggression pact — this one to divide up the world’s natural
resources.

Trump had nothing
to say about the judgment of the intelligence community that his pal Putin
directed the sabotage of his opponent’s campaign, except, “I think it’s
ridiculous. I think it’s just another excuse. I don’t believe it.”

It was the reaction of someone whose answer to
any summons toward responsibility is a tantrum. The difference is that this
immature, undisciplined and thuggish 70-year-old is about to be handed the keys
of the kingdom.

Bill Moyersis the managing editor ofMoyers &
CompanyandBillMoyers.com. His previous shows on
PBS includedNOW with Bill MoyersandBill Moyers Journal. Over the past
three decades he has become an icon of American journalism and is the author of
many books, includingBill Moyers Journal: The Conversation Continues,Moyers on
Democracy, andBill Moyers: On
Faith & Reason.He was one of the organizers of the Peace
Corps, a special assistant for Lyndon B. Johnson, a publisher of Newsday,
senior correspondent for CBS News and a producer of many groundbreaking series
on public television. He is the winner of more than 30 Emmys, nine Peabodys,
three George Polk awards.

Michael Winship, senior writing fellow
at Demos and president of the Writers Guild of America-East, was senior writer
forMoyers & Companyand Bill Moyers’ Journal and is senior
writer of BillMoyers.com.

Thought for the day

Nothing funny about tired Saturday Night Live on Fake News NBC! Question is, how do the Networks get away with these total Republican hit jobs without retribution? Likewise for many other shows? Very unfair and should be looked into. This is the real Collusion!

Individual One’s tweet at 4:52 AM - 17 Feb 2019 after a long, hard day of playing golf at Mar-A-Lago on Day Two of our “national emergency.”

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